Photo by: NYers for Thompson

On election night in 2009, after the first returns were posted showing Bill Thompson narrowly behind Mike Bloomberg, there was an hour or so when the gap between the candidates neither widened nor closed, even as more and more votes were counted. The comptroller was clearly running out of field in which to overtake the mayor. I asked a Thompson staffer when they’d throw in the towel. “We feel like we have a little juice left in southeast Queens,” he said. In the end, it wasn’t enough, but the staffer was right: While Bloomberg easily bested Thompson in the whole of Queens, the four Assembly districts in the borough’s southeast section overwhelmingly preferred the Democrat, some by a four-to-one margin.

A new publication covering southeast Queens, Communities of Color, recently spoke with Thompson about his planned 2013 mayoral run. As is his wont, the former comptroller broke little new ground in the chat—he still thinks mayoral control and stop-and-frisk are useful tools, just that Bloomberg is misusing them—but did call for bigger set-asides for minority and women contractors, and backed the planned convention center in Queens. Communities of Color editor Karen Clements shared the following passages with us:

    Thompson is a strong critic of the current state of education and the exclusion of parents and community. He believes that “it is by design [that] people have been excluded”. They didn’t want to hear from parents” he said speaking of the Mayor and then Chancellor Klein.

“The people in Southeast Queens, the parents, community leaders and others have been excluded. I think it is intentional. If you look at Mayoral control that has been around for eight years now, it was by design that people have been excluded.” He went on to talk about the lack of trust that was created from that situation. “There is a mistrust. If things are going so well, why are there school closing? Why did you have curriculums being changed three times within a five year period of time?”

Thompson supports mayoral control in education, but made it clear that the difference is who the mayor is and what they believe in. “Mayoral control, when it is done correctly, allows you to make faster decisions and have a more flexible school system.”

Under a Thompson leadership, he does not want the obsession with standardized testing as the sole measure of success versus critical thinking, a strong curriculum with parent and community involvement and he believes there should be a local superintendent, something that ties the schools together and a place where parents can go other than the just the schools. On the subject of charter schools, they “don’t scare him” he said. “But they aren’t the salvation of public education in New York City.”

Shifting to the subject of jobs, Thompson believes “what helps to grow jobs in local communities are small and midsize businesses.” There have been too many penalties and fees that have inhibited the growth of local and small business. He is hoping that the City of New York could work more with business. “I’d like New York City Government to start to do more business with local and small businesses…We spend billions of dollars a year so much of that money goes out of New York City…We should use tax dollars which instead of flowing outside of the city should be used to help support those business” he said.

Thompson would also like the City to emulate what is happening on a State level where the Governor is attempting to ensure 20 percent of minority and small business representation. Where there are Commissioners on the state level getting direction from the Governor, he would like to see something similar on a city level where there is accountability to ensure such business representation. He also likes the Governor’s idea for a Convention Center in Queens. “It is an excellent idea. It would create jobs. It would bring people into another part of the city”. Thompson said he would also work “to make sure that local people are employed, that they get the training that they need and that the expansion benefits, not just the city of New York but local communities.”

Knowing those neighborhoods well is to know that Stop and Frisk continues to be an issue, particularly with the youth. Thompson believes the program is a useful policing tool, especially in areas like Brownsville where residents are experiencing periods of violence, but he concedes it is being misused. “I just think it is a policing tool that is being misused and it needs to be changed. When you look at how many young people are stopped and what the results are. There’s no criminal activity there.”